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Monday, 25 November 2013

Some things you haven't seen yet - Europe Refresh!

Lat weekend, now already some 7 days ago, I went to en exhibition which was called Europe Refresh! By its founders it was communicaated as "A participatory event around crowdfunding" The ide behind this event was to give 50 projects from all around Europe the chance to show what they are doing, what their project are and to answer questions to people who might want to support them.

Living in Brussels, communicating Europe and once in a while some good ideas, I went there learn more about these projects.

I aked questions to about 19 projects and did some interviews with eight, since I was only around with my camera and tablet, the videos are not the greates, but you will get the information needed in addtion to the links and the short descriptions:

Tale Me:

The first I spoke to was Anna, she is the inventor of a project called Tale Me. The idea is easy, since high quality cloths are really expensive she and her team partner Catherine decided to create a company which allows designers to rent their high quality cloths. Here she explaines how what Tale me is, and how she got the idea:

Raconte un Monde:The project to travel the world
Julie and Michel are two people who decided to do an educative worl trip. In partnership with some four Belgian schools they trave to 12 countries to explore the world together with their online audience, children between 6-13 years. They will go into other schools in the countries they visit and will there speak with the kids and apply their ideas. For their online audience they are answering all their questions every two weeks.

You knwo the problem of finding a doctor when you are in a place you don't know. No matter whether you travel, you just moved or you are in a part of the city you just do not know well enough. Now here comes something which helps in these situations the application to get fast help from a doctor no matter where you are.

What is needed? And what for?

To build a homepage and a blog which is specialized on health issues and will support the construction of the app. So this seems to be a cool idea, if you want to support the project click the link!

WARLL
War is something many polticians try to explain when it come to the question if any political system which is democratic is justified. The problem is it is so difficult to explain it because most of the time you just understand it if you have felt it. Hiroshi has an idea to make it feelable without killing anyone. A chorepgraphy that expresses what war actully is:

What sounds like a C.S. Lewis novel is nothing less than a great roject about robotcs by a young team who cares about the future to unite what has been torn appart in the past. Robotics team from Bosnia&Herzegovina is more then just some kids playing scientists, its handcraft, knowledge and a lot of ambition. Here some words of heir own:

Are you interested in knowing where your food comes from? The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a movement wich has grown all over the world to practice what many people call green living. But be aware these are no hippies. Ever since it is sure that you are what you eat, movements like this have become more and more important. Now here is the idea:

Do you know the rivers of you city? In many cities in Europe river bed have been changed or covered up due to the belive that they might be harmfull for carrying deseases. In a way this is sad because you can not change this back, so many people will never know that there was a river once. I spoke to Benoit Joveneau and Charlotte Barbot about their project Tactile river. Its basically this. With artificial step stones made of transparent tactile LEDs they want to pave ways through cities which have covered rivers. This way the rivers could be visible again in the city and the path could be used to create a common art space for people. In the idea this street art in the art of street, but see yourself, they explained the project to me:

Again we are not talking about some kids movie and also not about a game for your mobile device. We are talking shit here... well in the idea of what we can do with waste, especially bio waste. Olivier Amestoy and Xavier Martin created their own NGO to help people in countries from different other countries in the world to use their waste in order to get energy out of it and to use natural procedures. But Olivier explained it to me by himself:In their own words

For those who are living in Brussels, the next project might be interesting. Living here know that there is a huge art scene and many film festivals and art and music fastivals. However what is missing is a Cinema Festival for the community of Matonge. Since some people are of the same oppinion there is now the chance to support this idea. A festival for Matonge would give this part of Brussels which is not always connotated with nice adjectives a chance to show its flurishing and great art. Support the cinema festival for Matonge

Do you know what it feels like when you are doing something for the first time? Fear and Desire is a project where a bunch of actors started something new, the danced. Not being professional dancers they experienced the feeling of fear of failing but also the desire to make it happen, to succeed. Fear and Desire is a documentary that needs help in post production, therefore you might want to give some money, but to see it and to go with these dancing actors through their fear and desire you might want to watch the result:Finishing the documentary: Fear and Desire!

When young austrians go Raggae this can be a real supprise. Now here they are. Some cool and funny people who are extremely creative. They mixed their home regions folklore with old school reggea design and sounds and created a sound system worth listening to. To bring it to other coommunities and regions the Steel City Sound System Movement is now looking for support! Check out their FB page. And support them so that you have a chance to listen to them!

The Last chapter as a ticket to heaven is no akward mix of a songbook with a movie. It is the awareness campaign about organ donation. This facinating project aims on bringing facts and all sides of the discussion together in order to help the people of Serbia to understand why it is important to actully donate organs. What is needed now is the support of us all to finish this brave documentary. Think about it, it could save your life!

There are some people who say, when I know the shoes you wear, I know who you are. Well this might be true, however, there are not only people who wear shoes, but also those who make shoes. Project MKD is a project for stylish basketball shoes made in Brussels. This guy makes shoes for you if you ave a special wish, but his greatest wish is to be able to make some shoes he designed. You might want to give him a try.

We all know that going by bike in the city in not always easy, especially if we are not wearing these ugly security wests. For protection definetly usefull but seriously not really nice to look at. Now if you are a woman this project here might be of interest foryou, men, thing might change once even for us, but you could find a nice present for you loved once here ;) Owlcraft is a bunch of ladies who want to change the appearence of securit wests for ladies in a fashionable way:

The picture we see is not always the image others might have. Following the rule this will ofte not be since we have our own perspective. The project India Beyound Words takes this into account. In the first step the ASBL Common Places and the Indian Foundation F.O.A.R.S have made pictures of kids while they trained them to make pictures with cameras. Now in order to give this knowledge a sense they are looking for support to give these kids cameras so that they can make their own pictures. Bringing the image they have into picture. If you would like to support this project you might want to check: The link.

Dead drops follwowed by KraK is project by some people who say that there is a need for more information about what is going on in the European Brussels. They want to implement USB-devices which are loaded with scientific information about all the different things which are going on in Brussels in the Europen quater in order to foster the knowledge about all the things going on. This might sound a bit weired, and I can tell it it, but we are talking about expressive art in politics here...! Support the project ff you like the idea.

Which road does and ant go in the place in the city in which it is living and what does this say about the place it is living in? This is what ANTelligence is about. Clustering information about the inteligence of ants in the city. There might be an added value which I did not yet get completely... ever since I tried to get this Ant road out of the room of my former flatmate and did no succeed, I ask the question who is more intelligent the ANTs are me? Anyhow, here we go!

Now if you have counted these have just been 18 Projects. There are three which I will hand over to a Journalist friend of mine, since they are interesting for him and I will share the link as soon as I have it.